Possession is Nine-Tenths
by AngelOfDeath10
Summary: AU(ish), Sarah feels like she's been slipping into something like madness and she might very well be but the cure and the cause is the same irascible Goblin King... and when he's involved you're never really sure of the stakes.


If we assume Labyrinth happened in 1986, then it's 1998 by this fic's accounting. Ah the days when not everyone had a cell phone.

I don't write for this fandom, like, ever because I can't do Jareth right but no one's going to write my plot bunnies for me! Just thought the idea was fun, nothing more. I like how this ended up slightly (oh so slightly) ambiguous.

Disclaimer: gosh darn it I don't own Labyrinth. If I did I wouldn't have let that manga sequel be all about Toby, bleh.

* * *

"Hey don't stay too late, you've done everything humanly possible for today and you're still here for some ungodly reason!" That Bostonian twang turned 'ungodly' into something closer to 'ungawdly.'

Sarah watched Josh, the technical director of the most recent play she had been involved in, set down the phone and gather his things together for the trek home. The bulk of her work on this play was almost done, sketches were going to be finalized in a meeting tomorrow with the director and his entourage and then she would probably only get sporadic calls until the performance. Despite knowing everything was flawless, as she moved her art around the drafting table looking for problems she felt nervous. Perfection was elusive, but her obsessiveness and single minded devotion were badges of honor in her profession and she had award nominations to prove it even if no solid wins. Everything was on the horizon.

"I only had a few late nights this week, nothing compared to what you go through I'm sure." Sarah hadn't worked with this particular technical director before but they all tended to be the same: overworked, detail oriented, and with memories that would make elephants blush. Josh was no different.

"Go home, Sarah, you can't treat every job like it's your frikkin' last. You'll burn out!" He was wrapping a thick coat around a belly that had only started to bulge from excess beer and too many fast cheap meals in his early middle age. Sarah knew she would have to start watching her own figure soon, her eating habits having become increasingly irregular and unhealthy as work pressed in from all sides.

Tapping out notes on her ThinkPad and wondering again if she could ever justify its purchase to herself, Sarah didn't even bother to answer his concerns. "Drive safe, Josh! I'll see you tomorrow morning." She waved behind her as she heard the man bark a quick laugh at her airy dismissal and waited for the sound of the office door closing with a click before she let out a breath.

It hadn't always been true that she preferred solitude, but it was trending that way now that she was on the shady side of twenty-seven and looking to the New Year with slight dread. Christmas was no more or less magical than any other work day to Sarah, but she could expect a few phone calls and planned accordingly for next week. She had told herself the punishing schedule she set for herself was because she wanted to be successful and this was the price she had to pay, and her family was accepting that excuse for the moment. Karen paid more attention to Sarah's biological clock than Sarah herself when it came down to it.

The truth was Sarah was afraid she was losing her mind and didn't want to drag anyone else down with her. The more friends she had, the more family she spent time with, the more likely they would see the darkness slowly stealing more of her waking hours.

Idyllic Regency parlors, and homey Victorian sitting rooms that she was commissioned to design coexisted with futuristic battlefields and modern slums and she had spent years learning how to create settings with enough depth to drive her inexorably towards the top of her profession so young. A rising star, she would command more than just a living wage soon enough for her work but that imagination came at a price.

Sleep was her enemy. The bottle of pills on her dresser had become her only ally in the fight for dreamless sleep, but her creativity was suffering. Every dreamless night meant the better part of a day frustrated at the drafting table. She never felt rested these days, like any day she would make it to the point where waking life was indistinguishable from dreams. Maybe she'd just become even more inspired and finally win that Tony.

"Get it together Williams!" Sarah, convinced her melodrama was partially brought on by the fact that she hung around with so many theatrical types and artists, forced herself to put down her pencil. Josh was right; maybe all this madness was the onset of burnout from letting her candle get a little too low.

It was a cold car ride to her small apartment and no warmer inside than out once she closed the door behind her. Her living space was more studio than apartment. Pictures hung all over from her various productions, and a box on a bookcase contained all the tickets from opening nights she had been invited to over the years. The lights in the room illuminated her overstuffed couch, blanket tossed carelessly over the back and waiting for her to sit down with a hot drink and pour over more scripts. Her favorite part of the job was reading the stories sent to her until she could imagine the author's worlds. Where a dining table might have been was a drafting table instead and sketches were pinned near it or piled neatly on it. Pencils, markers, watercolors, and assorted art supplies littered that corner.

A kitchenette, oddly bare, showed half a pot of cold coffee waiting to be thrown out and Sarah's breakfast dishes needing attention in the sink. Wrappers and take out containers were still on the counter and she looked at them with a grimace. She'd get rodents if she wasn't more careful. Her laptop bag and purse were unceremoniously dumped by the door. Having left the house in a rush early this morning she felt like she had left in darkness and returned to darkness, but that was winter in a nutshell.

"Let there be light!" she said to herself with a smile as she walked into her bedroom. The usual mess of someone too busy to do much besides throw clothes in the direction of the hamper and pray assaulted her, and jewelry and more art supplies were strewn over her night stand and dresser along with another script. You never knew where inspiration would strike you.

Having not made the bed in her rush out the door, the red comforter looked messy and inviting on the bed. Curling up and sleeping before she confronted another early morning in which she'd fight traffic and parking and all the usual business of life seemed like the most wonderful thing she could wish for right now. Even as cleaning up, listening to her voicemails, or even brushing her teeth was filtering through her mind she somehow found herself crawling under her blankets. All the lights were still on and she wasn't even sure if she had locked the door, but she felt so compelled to sleep that everything else just faded into the background.

Tonight, she was sleep well, she knew.

Tonight, she had forgotten to take her pill.

* * *

"Not again," her rumpled blouse and sensible black work pants had followed her into the dream, as per usual, but she never wore shoes to bed and she wiggled her toes in the dirt at her feet. It was neither hot nor cold, but she shivered anyway and drew her fingers through her long dark hair to comb it out a little and arrange it before the walk.

This time, everything seemed especially vivid. She had walked through this part of her mind's garden before, examining the short trees with their pale green leaves, and admiring the veins of minerals that run through nearly boulders. The ground was rusty and gold intermixed with the brown and Sarah didn't have to stop to admire it to know its look and feel. She had even used it once in a desert scene for a one act in a student college production, some Western inspired piece. The sketches might still be in a box in storage somewhere.

The rocks would get sharper the farther in towards the boulders she went, and her feet were tender so Sarah moved downhill where she knew eventually she would meet up with a stream and the border of a forest as unlike this desert as night was to day, darkness and dense growth, and where the humidity would make her skin slightly tacky. Sarah preferred the desert where she could see all around, but the grass and moss in the forest would be kinder on her bare feet. Staying still didn't even seem like an option.

Dream time never seemed linear, and as she was examining birds circling in the sky and various insects on the ground before she knew it she could make out the stream that led to the forest, light green growth all around the banks. The large rocks obscured the trees, but not for long, and she could make out the green plumes in the distance. Oddly tired from walking, she sat on the now lush grassy bank down to the stream and washed off her feet. Her toenail polish, gold and metallic, flashed under the clean water and she smiled at the refreshing feeling before starting off again.

"Too bad I don't get to do many nature scenes…" Sarah murmured to herself, just to hear a voice. She was happy alone at home, but here it was oppressive somehow. "Maybe they'll take me on for some Tempest or Midsummer Night and I'll get a shot at it." There were always places for woodland scenes, and she tried to think of all the ones she had done as she gingerly approached the edge of the tree line.

There was a narrow path this time, old and broken cobbles, and she looked to the sky which seemed in a perpetual twilight (or dawn) and then back into the darkness beyond the trees. There hadn't been a path the last time she was here, or if there had been she had carefully avoided it. For the life of her she couldn't come up with a solid reason not to travel to the interior.

"Well, waiting until I wake up sounds rather dull." She had done it before and could confirm that. "But why do I get the feeling…" Sarah didn't finish the sentence. Something wanted her to follow the path, that's what she felt. It took her some time to decide, and when she did she felt an electric tingle down her spine. The cobbles were smooth and irregular under her feet as she walked into the darkness.

* * *

Coming to with a start, Sarah saw the hint of light through her blinds and blinked the sleep out of her eyes. She had almost reached her destination; she knew that just as she knew she really needed to make sure to remove her makeup and brush her teeth before sleeping. The gross taste in her mouth and the bright digital display on her alarm clock had her lurch out of bed into a frigid room. All the lights in the living area were still on, and with a yawn Sarah wondered if it would make any difference in her power bill.

It had been so peaceful, benign even, that she couldn't imagine why she'd been avoiding normal sleep so carefully. It wasn't like the nightmares from a few months ago, where dark dwarven monsters battled on a grim mountainside against hobgoblins, blood oozing through axe cuts they inflicted on one another and Sarah stuck watching it all. Nor was it like the dark room full of screeching voices that had felt like an eternity before she woke up sweating and struggling in her sheets. Scenery she could handle, she had made it into her life, but creatures were just too much.

A calm nature walk had been just what she needed to refresh, and it made her think the pills weren't so necessary as she examined the over brewed coffee in the pot with disgust. Some Saturday. It was just going to be a quick meeting and then she'd be in her own until Monday when she'd supervise the painters and the carpenters with Josh's help and make sure everything was set up for success. More mistakes happened this time of year than usual, the holidays were very distracting.

Hair in a ponytail and light makeup were first order of business. Pulling on a dress and some tights and boots because it was fast and easy, Sarah picked up her purse and laptop from the floor next to the door and began to warm up her car. Oddly, she didn't feel tired or greasy as she expected to from skipping her morning shower while her little car's engine shuddered and the radio reminded her that Celine Dion would be her angel before she flipped it to ubiquitous Christmas music on the classical station.

Traffic was a dream and the weather was clear if cold as she stepped into the meeting. Josh looked like he had drank his dinner and would rather be sleeping this morning judging by the bags under his eyes, but the director was as intense and chipper as usual. They all poured over Sarah's sketches and she left the meeting feeling supported and very happy that changes had been minimal. The director's words to her—visionary, mature, imaginative—had inflated her to the point that when the invitation to the Christmas party that evening had inevitably come Sarah said yes. It had been brewing for some time, this party, and Sarah usually made a point to stay away from the actors after having learned from some sour relationships that her brand of art and theirs seemed to be incompatible, not to mention every other part of the lifestyle. By early afternoon, looking at paint swatches on the canvases, Sarah was having second thoughts.

"Yes yes, that's fine." Josh threw up his hands as he said she needed to say yes to one of them since he couldn't tell the difference between off white and eggshell in this light and told her to go show the carpenter how she wanted the cathedral arch shaped and get out of his hair a while. All that was getting done today was measuring and sorting. Sarah wasn't strictly needed, but her help was appreciated.

Sarah grabbed her water bottle and took a deep drink, wishing she had just made an excuse to go home after the meeting. She was just getting in people's hair like this, and she hated feeling helpless. Seeing a likely looking person with a tape measure near the wood pile, she gestured for him to come over, and as he got closer she broke out into a cold sweat. Handsome men did that to her sometimes, particularly when they were slim and blond.

"Do you know where the master carpenter is? Josh swore to me he had one for this project, and I wanted to talk to him a moment."

The man took off his safety goggles and she was struck by how blue his eyes were. New York seemed like that, where even the carpenters were inhumanly gorgeous actors. It was entirely probable this was just an actor helping out before the party in a couple hours.

"I haven't seen him around today. Who should I say was asking for him?" Foreign too, or a carefully cultivated accent, either way she felt her stomach drop in that way that told her she needed to put some space between herself and this man before she started acting like an idiot. She darted her eyes down to look for a ring, hoping that would calm down her heart, but no such luck.

"Sarah Williams, set designer. He has my notes, but there are some changes from this morning I wanted to let him know about before he marks the beams for the cathedral arch."

The man smiled and her stomach flipped, it had been entirely too long since her last date if she was being this affected. "I'll be sure to let him know… Sarah." The way he said her name felt like a caress down her spine and her posture immediately straightened.

"I've gotta go," She said gracelessly and turned around so fast she risked smacking him with her long ponytail. Maybe her college housemate who went into banking had a nice friend she could meet, someone who wasn't in theater, and who didn't make her feel like she lost 50 IQ points from breathing the same air. His laugh that followed her practically stumbling away was all the push she needed to skip the party, and she tamped down her flare of temper.

* * *

Mortified at her cowardice, Sarah immediately popped open a beer from the six pack that she had bought at the grocery store to go along with the deli sandwich she had also bought there and stewed in her emotions. Wrapped in her robe and pajamas, she combed her recently blown dry hair and felt the lingering wet sports while the TV blared Law and Order. Somewhere in her mind she was noting the sets and taking notes for how she would have done it differently, thus why she often skipped TV watching.

So a cute guy had talked to her and she had as good as fallen on her face. Sarah needed to get over herself and conquer those fluttery feelings. She knew her type, even since that elaborate hallucination she had suffered as a result of stress freshman year of high school. After talking to therapists here and there over the years about it she had it pretty well figured out, but it had left an impression and she wasn't sure what to make of today's visceral reaction. Thirteen years was a long time to nurse a flame for a figment of her imagination.

After the third beer and not one bite of sandwich Sarah was wondering what happened to that old book of hers, and at the same time idly mumbled to herself how she should ask if Toby would dig it out of the attic for her like a good brother because he had probably forgotten to get her a gift for Christmas anyway. Teenage boys seemed to forget a lot of things about the holidays, but he was a good kid in general. He would probably even do it without her having to pull on his heartstrings. Old memories of watching him grow from baby to cute little kid faded into memories that couldn't possibly be true of a glittering haughty man.

An infomercial had just started to run as the fifth beer slipped from her hand and emptied part of its contents on the floor while she snored ever so slightly on her couch.

* * *

The center of the forest, which she hadn't ever navigated to before and probably never would have stumbled across without the path, was a valley. The base of the valley was a lake and she could see many streams feeding into it, but in the center of the lake was a castle. It might have been ostentatious once but significant portions of it were crumbled in on itself with only one tower standing insolently tall from the four or five it might have had previously. The ivy choking everything looked so green it was almost black, and Sarah wondered how she could cross the lake to explore.

Something snorted behind her and she squinted into the brush only to see nothing. Still a little buzzed from the beer, Sarah assumed she had just startled herself for no reason and boldly moved forward. Sliding down the bank to the edge of the lake, she took one last look around and decided on the most direct option to get across the lake. Stripping out of her pajama pants, she folded them into her robe and used the robe belt to make a little bundle. Glad there was no appreciable breeze and clad in nothing but a white tank top and navy underwear, Sarah waded into the water and hissed at how frigid it was. Waiting for her skin to adjust she finally sank in the rest of the way and floated on her back while holding her clothes above her. It wouldn't take too long to kick herself over to the castle, even if she could see nothing but sky from this vantage point.

The water had been too dark to see if anything sinister lurked, but she had more bravery in this dream world than when she was awake and she could feel the alcohol hum in her mind still dulling her emotions. Sarah knew she should have just gone to the party. Maybe she would have been able to flirt with the handsome blond maybe-carpenter. There would have been good food, too, and laughter. There hadn't been much laughter in her life recently.

A reed or something brushed her leg and Sarah kicked twice as fast, heart racing, until she felt her heel hit the bottom and she realized she could stand up in this depth. Tired arms continued to hold her dry pants above her as she regained her feet slowly and waded the rest of the way to the castle. Her hair felt heavy as it streamed its retained water down her back, so even when she reached dry land she knew she couldn't get dressed for some time. Now out of the water, the air felt cold instead of tepid and she wondered how much colder the inside of the castle would be or if she could somehow figure out how to start a fire. In the end she stuck with wringing out her hair and softly singing tunelessly to herself before wrapping up in the robe again. The pants she tied around her waist with the robe belt.

One of these nights she was going to wear her sneakers to bed, she needed to promise herself just to see.

The castle ruins were magnificent, and she took in the details with an eye to sketching when she woke up. Something about the feeling of the place, the expectation in the air, made her excited just to be there. The alcohol buzz was almost entirely gone now and Sarah tried to identify the detritus scattered about. It seemed like whatever had happened here had caused the inhabitants to leave in a bit of a hurry because molding clothes and broken weapons lay about in the courtyard along with crushed pots and turned over carts. Whoever had sacked this castle had done a good job, but thankfully there were no skeletons she could spy. For some reason thoughts of skeletons made her wary enough to pick up a patina crusted pitchfork with a broken handle.

"Take it slowly, you're not running anywhere in bare feet…" Making a habit of talking to herself was going to get her in trouble again. Talking to her mirror as if it could talk back to her as a teen had gotten her placed squarely in counseling twice a week for months and she wanted no repeat of those delusions. All great artists are a little mad, she had told herself by way of justification.

The great hall was straight ahead and the center was lit as brightly as anything outdoors ever was with the significant absence of a roof. It was circular with a fire pit in the center that seemed to be absent of wood but did contain a small horned helmet, as if sized for a child. In the corner, still shaded by what was left of the domed roof, was the throne. It didn't look particularly high or large, and she remembered how better nutrition had given humans a leg up on height compared to their medieval ancestors.

In the same breath she also had the feeling this throne was not built for someone who was strictly human. She had picked her way over and stood next to it, surveying the view as if she were the absent monarch.

"Not every princess becomes a queen." She hadn't heard his voice in years but she couldn't forget it. Haughty, cultured, with enough sneer to drip aristocracy.

Wooden doors half broken from their hinges framed him, blond hair much shorter if still a bit ragged and dressed all in tight black as if he were Hamlet before his soliloquy. So thin, too thin, his cheeks were hollow and his skin sallow but those eyes were sharp enough to scalp her if she wasn't careful. Sarah held more tightly to her pitchfork.

The smirk he directed at her was disarming despite being no less malicious and her gut wrenched, "You'll pardon me if I find your choice of weapon oddly appropriate."

"You're a figment of my imagination," Sarah told herself, in an attempt to regain control of her spiraling panic. All those years in therapy and she couldn't win out against her own sick mind.

"What a luxury to be able to believe that. Will you allow me the same courtesy?" He took silent steps into the room and his ill health was even more apparent in the half-light.

Adrenaline flooded her body and Sarah began to shake ever so slightly, nerves on fire, poised to strike or flee. "What do you want from me?"

Lithely he hopped into the empty fire pit and sat on the stone edging surrounding it. Runes carved into the edge she hadn't noticed previously glowed as he brushed his fingers over them. A fire stuttered to life, slowly blackening the helmet at the center. She could see no fuel. The warmth was welcome, her hair wet and heavy still, and the pervasive dampness of her clothes generally uncomfortable.

"Answer me, Jareth!"

"I suppose when you put it like that, I don't have much choice, my lady." His mismatched eyes gave her a baleful stare across the fire. "I want what I have always wanted from you, but circumstances have conspired to place me in an awkward enough position as to _need_ something as well."

"I don't owe you anything." She had drawn closer to the fire, almost unconsciously, but caught herself at the last moment and circled so that the diameter of the fire pit separated her from the shadowy Goblin King.

He laughed, and it was a short ugly bark instead of the languorous tones that she had always imagined escaped his lips. Too often she had pictured him in the place of the romantic leads of the scripts she read and it was hard to shake the feeling that she was even sicker inside than he looked on the outside. "While I suppose you could claim right of conquest, something tells me you'll still be grateful for all the gifts I gave you. You may be cruel but you have yet to prove heartless."

"All you did was take from me."

"And all you did was whine at me."

True enough to sting, Sarah shut her mouth against a quick retort. "Since I'm clearly hallucinating again, and I probably won't be able to find a therapist this close to Christmas, you might as well give me more material to work with so I don't forget." On the contrary, this felt more real than her life or her job.

"While insanity is often inevitable for those that bond to my kind, the benefits of being chosen are substantial." Jareth's voice crackled like the fire, hot and urgent. "Muse you would probably be most familiar with, _leannan sith_ or _huldrekarl_ if you're more accurate."

Sarah knew the myth of the _leannan sith_ even if the other term was foreign to her. "If you're taking credit for my work and career then you can go to hell, figment of my psyche or no."

"Oh you may have developed your ability to draw after our little encounter, I'll give you that, but did you ever wonder how exquisite your detail was for fantasy scenes? How the work that made you famous always seemed to flow so easily from your mind as if by magic? The chosen are always _blessed_."

"What chosen… I called on you, I made you up!" Sarah spluttered, clutching the pitchfork so tightly she could feel the tendons straining in her hands. She couldn't even believe her own oft practiced mental words—just a dream, it isn't real, you have an overactive imagination…

"The only part of me you control, my dear, is my appearance and I find it invariably curious I look much the same after all these years. Have you changed so little since then?" Even gaunt and unhealthy he drew her towards him, she wanted to feel him arms around her and trace his sharp cheekbones or run her hands through his fine hair. It had to be illusion, part of the spell that made up his essence, desire pouring out of him as easily as breath.

Sarah calmed the warring factions of her mind, wishing she was still drunk for the false bravado it gave her, and because she was better at being belligerent and asexual that way. "Jareth… get to the point."

"I'd say you were a woman after my own heart, but you already possess it. And after watching your little swim I dare say I wouldn't mind offering up my body as well." His voice was all honey.

"Ha, ha." Sarah said in a flat, sarcastic tone, but she was oh so tempted no matter how she scoffed.

"My kind are truthful, unfortunately, and I spoke no lie. My soul and yours are intertwined for good or ill, but I called you to me to warn you that my time—ours if we must be technical—grows short."

Sarah tried to discern if he was sad or not, but all she could see was the same cold anger only exposed as passionate by the gloved hands balled to quivering fists in his lap.

"Why should I mourn the death of a parasite?" Her words were hard but worry ran deep. He was literally the stuff of her dreams and it felt like she had found him only to be told they were on the verge of parting.

"_You_ are the parasite in this story, my dear." He stood suddenly, like a flash bomb had gone off in his mind. Pacing around, he stayed on his side of the fire, but she could feel waves of malevolence pour from him and lap at her fears. "You were never supposed to refuse my offer! When you said your precious 'right words' and turned my world upside down instead of you being bonded to me, as nature intended, I became bonded to you. I was going to be your slave either way…"

"HA! You're not anyone's slave!" But rogue guilt had sprung up inside of her, weakening her words and her resolve.

"You are delightfully demanding; you ask for inspiration and I deliver miracles time and again. And at night when you think of me I have been more than pleased by the results as, I think, are you." Sarah turned beet red, wishing that had remained unspoken, "But this bond was not meant to last the length of your human life…" Sarah suddenly thought of all the brilliant artists who died too young. How many of them had been possessed by creatures like Jareth? "Instead of your energy feeding me, mine is feeding you, and I am _dying_." He said the last word with such horror Sarah felt her throat close a little in empathy, or was it the bond he claimed they shared affecting her?

The silence that stole over them was profound. Sarah took a moment to string her thoughts together. Assuming this was more than a hallucination and Jareth were indeed some sort of supernatural creature that had chosen her but something had gone wrong in the binding, could she really be angry at him for wanting to escape? He was so beautiful it pained her, but even she could see he was wasting away physically in this manifestation. If it were a lie then she wasn't sure what she risked by letting him go, but she was also reasonably sure her deteriorating mental state lately hadn't been imagined.

"I assume you only called me here because you intend me to take some action."

Jareth focused on her face instead of staring off into the distance at his imagined fate and began to stalk around to her side of the fire. "You are a woman of action, I have discovered. Until the situation had become desperate for us both I wasn't sure you would listen." Hope softened his expression and she wondered at the intimacy of the smile he directed at her.

For the first time Sarah realized the patina was because the pitchfork was made of bronze. Her decade of battling anemia came under new light as she thought about the implications of her body rejecting iron. The little pieces of how she didn't fit into the world suddenly made sense if she took it through the filter of being fae touched. It was all so deeply ridiculous, but she wanted it to be true and here in her hallucination she could let it be. Her life had been about increasing isolation and control, and here maybe was her chance to let go.

"Since you insist on calling me a parasite, though symbiotic would be more flattering, then I will make the answer simple." Leaning down so their faces were an arm's length away and she could see every one of his sharp teeth as he smiled, she felt his breath on her face. "Find me a new host."

* * *

Sarah knew she had finally broken through the veil. Hallucination and reality had become the same because one moment ago she had woken up to Mike Levey trying to sell her an Amazing Discovery and now she was back in her dress and headed to the inevitable site of the Christmas after party. Josh had said his favorite bar was just a skip and a jump from the theater and after driving like a bat out of hell back to the city she only had to try a few places before she located the cast and crew still celebrating. It was barely morning, they had over an hour before the bar closed.

"Sarah! Nice to know you're not a total cold fish, but you missed all the eggnog!" Josh, cheeks red and puffy, called her over immediately.

Out of breath from rushing around, Sarah came over to see Josh holding court with some of the technical staff while the director had his own group of the cast hanging on to him. She made some sort of excuse involving Christmas shopping and last minute details that no one really cared about and sat down with a painter who was drunkenly regaling her with tales of several hours ago that may or may not be true. Taking the opportunity to look around, she spotted the man in the red shirt from earlier that day and excused herself from the painter who kept talking to the air where her head had been.

"Excuse me," she placed a hand on his shoulder and the man turned around to give her a smile so perfect that cosmetic dental work had to have been involved. Her brain turned to jelly for a second.

"Sarah Williams." He said her full name with that accent, like he had learned British English after his native language. Just as untouchable and alien in some ways, he had seemed the natural choice. Even if she had gone clinically insane, she would know momentarily just how off her nut she might be.

"What's your name?" She wanted to tap her foot, impatient to line everything up and justify what she was about to do.

"Jack Wolff. Pleased to meet you for the first time the second time." Probably not his real name, but many actors changed them. He laughed briefly, and she paused a moment.

"So you're not a carpenter?" Her eyes darted around and she wondered if she should get a drink anyway. The sour beer taste was all that was left of her activities earlier and not even one drop of liquid courage was left after her vision.

The man, Jack, turned towards her fully when she didn't immediately run, and she was impressed at his easy demeanor. "I'm afraid no one so important. I'm stuck in this leading actor business until my woodworking career takes off."

Of course he was the lead. Smiling despite herself she asked the last question in a rush. "Do you forgive others easily?"

"You'd have to ask my frien—" Sarah cut him off as she grabbed the collar of his shirt and brought him down for a kiss. Later she would carefully blame the mistletoe that she would swear up and down was above them.

Delusions aside the change was immediate, as the neon signs on the interior of the bar seemed to fade just a little and tiredness she couldn't call natural stole over her body. It felt like dying just a little, and Sarah wondered how deep her belief in this most recent construction ran. How close to madness had she come? Her pained groan as they parted signaled the start of a headache.

"I didn't think it was that bad." Jack looked down at her with a smirk when she finally met his eyes, but if her world had just faded a little he seemed unfazed. He looked off to the side as someone who had seen their kiss hooted at him, and rubbed his eye as if he had grit in it. After blinking a few times he regarded Sarah once more with the same smirk only now one pupil was slightly more dilated.

"Perhaps we should try it again…" The same voice, but the timbre was different and Sarah tried not to hope too hard.

"I don't know if you want—"

"I most certainly want." He said as he leaned down to catch her lips.


End file.
